Femto Forum Announces Winners of the Femtocell Industry Awards 2011

London, UK – 23rd June 2011 – The Femto Forum, the independent industry and operator association that supports femtocell deployment worldwide, today announced the winners of the Femto Forum Femtocell Industry Awards 2011. The awards recognise outstanding achievement within, and contributions to, the femtocell industry. The awards were presented at a gala dinner at the Femtocells World Summit in London last night.

“Tom has laboured tirelessly in the interest of the whole femtocell industry. Most notably, his work to define the services API will help create a new generation of mobile apps and services. His efforts to achieve agreement on the requirements and architecture options for standardised enterprise femtocells are helping to extend the technology beyond the home,” agreed the Femto Forum Chairs.

“Picochip has moved the industry forward yet again by reducing the size, cost and power consumption of the core technology. By enabling a USB form factor, femtocells can be simply and economically added to existing user equipment such as home gateways and set top boxes,” said David Chambers, the lead judge for the category and editor of ThinkFemtocell.

“While femtocells had their first successes in the home, the market for the technology is now expanding into outdoor metropolitan hotspots, rural backwaters and certain areas of the enterprise. Alcatel-Lucent has been an important contributor to this evolution, by designing and deploying these new small cell use cases around the world,” said Dean Bubley, the lead judge for the category and Founder and Director at Disruptive Analysis.

“With femtocell deployments already extending into the hundreds of thousands, and in the future millions, automated performance management and fault diagnostics isn’t just important, it’s critical. ip.access is leading the way in this space by allowing operators to intelligently examine live data to improve their services,” said the lead judges for the category – Peter Jarich, Service Director at Current Analysis and Ken Rehbehn, Principle Analyst at Yankee Group.

“Although femtocells are usually associated with improved coverage and capacity, they also have the potential to provide new mobile applications and services. However, this will only ever be a pipedream without the right tools for developers. Through its work on the Femto Forum’s API, and now its own in-house developed software development kit, Alcatel-Lucent is helping developers to create new femto applications and services,” said Michelle Donegan, the lead judge for the category and European Editor at Light Reading Mobile.
6. Progress in commercial deployment (vendor or ecosystem)
Award Winner: Huawei – China Unicom’s 3G Inn Wireless Broadband Service by Huawei Technologies

“Huawei’s ambitious deployment for China Unicom is not only scalable to a degree that befits such a vast nation, it is also an exciting example of the new generation of public access offerings. The service is already bringing improved coverage and, more importantly vital extra data capacity, to universities, shopping malls and enterprises,” said Dimitris Mavrakis, the lead judge for the category and Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media.
7. Commercial deployment – marketing campaign (operator)
Award Winner: Vodafone – Vodafone Femto Productline – Best value proposition build and multi-market rollout

“Nobody can question Vodafone’s commitment to femtocells with services already in place all around the world. Critical to their success has been communicating the fundamental consumer benefits in a simple and compelling manner. By ensuring the actual service is also simple to setup and operate, the result has been a series of successful deployments spanning the globe,” Steven Hartley, the lead judge for the category and Principal Analyst for Telco Strategy at Ovum.
8. Commercial deployment – technical implementation (operator)
Award Winner: Vodafone – Vodafone Group Best Commercial Deployment Technical Implementation

“The speed and ease with which Vodafone has rolled out nine commercial femtocell networks around the world has disguised a hugely technically challenging feat. Marrying femtocells and core networks from various different vendors across multiple regions is complex to say the least, yet Vodafone has achieved it with gusto and in doing so inspired the entire operator community to have confidence in the technology,” said Dan Warren, the lead judge for the category and Senior Director of Technology for the GSMA.
9. Contribution to femtocell standards (individual or company)
Award Winner: Nokia Siemens Networks – Contribution to 3GPP Releases 10 and 11 – Enhancements to mobility and interference management

“Standards have been central to the continued growth in femtocell deployments. They give operators a real choice of femtocell products while also helping to bring down the cost of equipment. Nokia Siemens Networks has been a major force in achieving the consensus required to make standards possible,” said Adrian Scrase, the lead judge for the category and Head of the Mobile Competence Centre at 3GPP.
10. Enabling technology (components, subsystems, modules etc.)
Award Winner: Texas Instruments

“It is becoming clear that femtocells are set to play a crucial role in LTE networks – yet UMTS services aren’t going anywhere and will continue to carry the bulk of traffic for years to come. Texas Instruments is playing a key role in the development of multi-mode femtocells, thereby establishing future-proof networks that also meet the needs of the present,” said Aditya Kaul, the lead judge for the category and Practice Director of Mobile Networks for ABI Research.
11. Social vision – promoting femtocells for social/ economic/ environmental development
Award Winner: NEC – Outdoor small cells for Rural & Developing Communities to bridge the digital divide

“Going beyond simply plugging in-home coverage gaps in developed mobile markets, femtocells are already starting to be used to bring mobile services to whole villages in rural areas where it has traditionally been deemed uneconomical. Today this is happening in developed countries, but in the future the technology could also be coupled with satellite backhaul to bring mobile services to developing markets too. NEC is conducting pioneering work in this space and thereby helping to bridge the digital divide,” said Caroline Gabriel, the lead judge for the category and Research Director for Rethink Technology Research.

“Rakon is one of the unsung heroes behind many of the world’s femtocell deployments. Not only has the company been a workhorse in the Femto Forum, but its oscillator technology ensures femtocells fundamentally operate effectively and cost-effectively in a wide variety of contexts” said Dean Bubley, Chairman of the judges and Founder and Director at Disruptive Analysis.
13. Chairman’s Award
Award Winner: Mehmet Yavuz – Qualcomm

“Mehmet is a true star in the Femto Forum’s frequency management endeavours. His work has established conclusively that femtocells introduce new levels of spectrum efficiency, while also being capable of operating in even the most challenging radio environments,” said Simon Saunders, Chairman of the Femto Forum.

‘The judging panel was very impressed with the calibre of the award submissions. The femtocell business has undergone major changes over the past few years – who could have expected a few years ago that we would now be awarding prizes for devices designed for outdoor urban locations and tools to help developers create tailored mobile applications? The industry continues to evolve and this is reflected in this year’s award winners,” said Dean Bubley, Chairman of the judges and Founder and Director at Disruptive Analysis. “My congratulations go to the winners and all those who participated.”

The awards were open to the whole industry and were judged independently of the Femto Forum by a panel of distinguished analysts, journalists and industry experts, chaired by Dean Bubley, Founder and Director at Disruptive Analysis.

About the Femto Forum
Femtocells are low-power wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum to connect standard mobile devices to a mobile operator’s network using residential DSL or cable broadband connections. The Femto Forum (www.femtoforum.org) has been set up to promote the wide-scale adoption of femtocells. It has 137 members including 63 operators representing more than 1.71 billion mobile subscribers – 33% of the global total. Comprised of mobile operators, telecoms hardware and software vendors, content providers and innovative start-ups, its mission is to advance the development and adoption of small cells via femtocells and broader applications of femto technology for the provision of high-quality 2G/3G/4G coverage and services within the residential, enterprise and public access markets.